Interpublic Group and Havas announced strong third quarter growth last week, while WPP cut its 2011 sales growth forecast on Friday.

WPP’s third quarter trading statement said that the group’s like-for-like sales rose by 4.7% to £2.46bn, lower than the 5.6% and 6.7% growth achieved in the second and first quarters respectively.

The overall results were dragged down by the poor performance of its consumer insight division.

Like-for-like revenues at WPP’s public relations division grew by 6.1% in the third quarter and by 5.4% in the first three quarters of 2011.

Meanwhile, Interpublic Group, owner of Weber Shandwick and GolinHarris announced its third quarter results on Friday, reporting strong growth in public relations and its general UK business.

The firm’s Constituency Management Group (CMG), which encompasses Weber Shandwick, GolinHarris, FutureBrand and other marketing service specialists, saw revenue growth of 9.3% to US$293.8m during the quarter. This represented organic growth of 10.9%.

Over the first nine months of 2011, IPG’s PR businesses have seen revenue growth of 7.6% and organic revenue growth of 9.3%. Overall, the group saw revenues increase by 11.1% from the third quarter 2010, 8.7% on an organic basis.

Its UK businesses saw third quarter revenues rise by 10.9% (organic growth of 4.3%). Over the first nine months of the year IPG has seen revenues grow by 19.3% in the UK, representing organic growth of 9.3%.

On Thursday, Havas reported organic third quarter growth of 7.3 per cent.

Earlier in the month Omnicom revealed that its net income for the third quarter of 2011 increased by 16.7% to $203.7m. Its public relations division, however, grew by only 4.2% during the quarter.

Publicis saw third quarter revenue growth of 6.4% year-on-year and growth in PR revenues of 6.5%.